The Ghost of Hairstyles Past

Okay, first of all - yes. I play the saxophone. For real. It's in the bio. But you probably didn't even notice that aspect of this photograph, because you were too busy wondering just what in the hell is going on with my hair.

We all have some odd, if not downright regrettable hairstyles somewhere in our histories. Some of them will have been influenced by the styles of whatever decade they were from, some of them were just a really poor fit for the needs of our particular heads. I'm pretty sure the one pictured above has enough reach to cover both of those categories, and more. I couldn't have been more than 16 or 17 in this photo, but my hair is easily pushing 80. I call this style the Lamb Dressed as Mutton. It goes without saying that this wasn't the ideal style for my face shape, and in fact I'm not sure that there actually is a face shape that would support this particular brand of mushroom-cap volume up top. I probably saw this style in a magazine on some wraithlike model and thought, "yes. I'll have that."

Of course, not all of my hairstyles were deeply regrettable. Some of them were perfectly lovely, just not right for me. I've had this chin-length bob several times in my life - most recently when I finally grew out the last of my dyed hair and wanted to cut the last few centimetres of dye off. This hairstyle is actually one of my husband's favorites. Me...perhaps not so much. I call it The Not Quite. Not quite long enough to pull back, but not quite short enough to not be in your face when you exercise. It also requires a lot more maintenance than one might think for a "carefree" shorter-length hairstyle. Having wavy hair, it required a decent amount of flattening, product, and blow drying to get it to not look like a slightly longer version of the Lamb Dressed as Mutton. Too much work.

Old Photographs Can Betray Your Darkest Past Hairstyle Shame

This hairstyle, which I had in the mid to late 90s, clearly wants to speak to the manager. This was at the height of the Christy Turlington boyish pixie cut craze of the 90s, when all the models were toothpick-thin and had boy cuts. I was living in Seattle at the time, and this was my professional headshot. Would you believe I was only in my mid twenties in this photo? This hairtyle transformed me into a middle-aged soccer mom who in reality was too young to actually play a middle-aged soccer mom. This hair was a casting nightmare, and a pretty bad call on my part. I'm calling this one the Coupon Clipper.

Lastly, where would we be without the obligatory high school yearbook photo? With apologies to my 1989 high school classmates who shared this page with me (along with our rooster-comb "mall bangs"), feast your eyes on the glory that was my kinky perm. I call this one The Permaculture (see what I did there?) I'm not sure you can even still get a perm in the year 2020, but man I can still remember the smell coming off of that thing. My hair reeked of ammonia for MONTHS and never really grew-in straight again, such was the extent of the trauma it had endured. I know... weird, right?

Got a regrettable hairstyle story? Share it in the comments!